Nintendo Co. Ltd. sold 604,200 of its new Wii video game consoles in the United States in December, beating Sony Corp. which sold 490,700 units of its new PlayStation 3, according to retail market research firm NPD.

Microsoft Corp. sold 1.1 million Xbox 360 video game consoles in December.

According to my calculator, that’s a total of 2,194,900 and Microsoft got half. The usual NPD caveats apply (brick and mortar stores only…).

Sony Corp. sold 466,716 PlayStation 3 game consoles in Japan by the end of last month, less than half of its shipment target and of sales of Nintendo Co.’s rival Wii console, video game magazine publisher Enterbrain said on Tuesday.

Enterbrain said Nintendo sold 989,118 Wii units despite a launch date about three weeks later than the PS3 in Japan. Nintendo introduced the Wii in Japan on Dec. 2 and had a target of shipping 1 million units in that market by year end.

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Sony said earlier this week that it met its goal of shipping 1 million PS3 units to North America since its launch there on Nov. 17, but did so by diverting units from Japan.

Microsoft isn’t mentioned because their Japanese sales are in the noise, but it looks like Nintendo might well have the leading game console worldwide for December. And if you don’t mind my hitting my favorite nail once again, Nintendo makes money on every one, unlike Microsoft and Sony. As for Sony, the game may change when they get their production glitches sorted, but they’re clearly playing catch up.